I looked up.
A woman in her late 50s stood over me with a stack of forms tucked under one arm.
“I’m Margaret, one of the clerks here,” she said gently. “You have the 10 o’clock case?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you holding up all right?”
“I haven’t slept in three weeks,” I admitted. “So, honestly, no.”
Her eyes softened in a way that made me feel as though she already knew things about me that I had never told her.
“You brought all five children with you?”
“I couldn’t leave them anywhere,” I said. “They’ve already been left too many times.”
She nodded slowly, as if the sentence carried real weight.
Then, she glanced at the children, and I saw her lips tighten before she moved on.
I turned back to them.
Lila, who was no more than three, pressed her forehead against Eli’s shoulder.
The twins, who were barely four, held hands as though their fingers had been sewn together.
The youngest, still wearing a padded jacket two sizes too big, sat on Eli’s lap and gripped a stuffed rabbit that was missing one ear.
Three weeks earlier, I had not known any of them.
I had been in my workshop, sanding a table for a client in the next town while listening to the radio.
Then, I saw their faces on the emergency placement registry, and something old and buried in my chest tightened so painfully that I could hardly breathe.
I emptied my savings account that same night.
“Sir?” Eli looked at me, and his voice was barely a whisper. “Are they going to take us to different houses?”
